


Down in the Dumps

by Car



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Henry Bowers Being an Asshole, M/M, Oblivious Eddie Kaspbrak, Pining, Pre-Canon, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, lots of talk about poop and poop jokes, middle school losers, poop jokes, post-georgie pre-movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22514053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Car/pseuds/Car
Summary: "Dear Richie, sorry for taking a hot, steamy dump in your backpack last month. Have a good summer!"-After the Bowers gang plays a particularly disgusting prank on Richie, he enlists Eddie's (reluctant) assistance in helping him clean up the mess.It's a pretty crappy situation. Like, it really stinks.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54





	Down in the Dumps

"So, we got a problem."

Eddie blinked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at the boy standing on his front porch. Richie clutched his old, ratty JanSport backpack in his hands, not meeting Eddie's eyes, before finally blowing a long breath of air out between his lips and holding the offending bag open for Eddie to cautiously peer inside. 

His head popped up almost immediately.

"Rich."

"Yup."

"What am I looking at right now?"

Richie shifted on his feet awkwardly. "It's a turd, Eds."

Oh my _god_. 

"Yeah Richie, I fucking see it's a fucking turd. Why is it in your backpack? Why- why did you bring it he-- _Why?_ "

Richie sighed again. "Because Bowers is an asshole and Belch apparently ate a high-fiber supper last night. You're the one with the raging boner for Mr. Clean, dude. Help me out here."

"What?! Boner for-- _What?!_ "

"Jesus Christ Eds, are we really gonna do this out here? C'mon, let me in."

Eddie felt his mouth gape. Without thinking, he stepped in front of the door, blocking it. "No! No you can't come in, Richie, what the _hell_?!"

Of course, Richie being _Richie_ managed to push his way past Eddie anyway, marching up the stairs to his room like he owned the place. Eddie growled in annoyance, following behind him, hot on heels, fumbling around in his fanny pack for his inhaler.

"Richie. Richie, are you serious right now? Like, for real? Why did you bring that to my house? Do you know how many diseases are caused by exposure to human excrement?!"

"Yeah Eddie, I'm not an idiot," he snapped, once safely inside Eddie's room with the door closed. "Do you think I _want_ fucking Belch Huggins' shit rolling around my algebra notes?" He made a face, probably picturing the mess of his supplies sitting disgustingly at the bottom of the backpack. That's what Eddie was picturing at least. He took a puff of his inhaler and tried not to gag. "Now are you gonna help me or not?"

Eddie pursed his lips, his eyes flicking from Richie's face to the backpack and back, mentally calculating how likely it was that the poop particles were seeping through the fabric and onto his carpet, and being, frankly, too dumbfounded and horrified to care how obvious he was being about it. 

"I think you need to just throw it all out, dude," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think it's worth saving."

"No way," Richie argued immediately. "Went and Mags just had to get me new glasses like, _two weeks ago_. Fat chance they're gonna shell out for a new backpack now too."

Eddie nodded, he remembered that week well. Richie had had to fumble around near-blind, waiting for his parents to be able to get off work to bring him to the eye doctor. Thankfully, Bill had been able to find an old pair of Richie's glasses from fourth grade floating around his room he was able to use, at least for a few days. 

"Wasn't it Bowers that broke your glasses, too?" Eddie asked quietly. 

"Hocksetter. So pretty much, yeah."

He bit his lip. _Puff_. He couldn't believe he was doing this. 

(That was a lie. It was _Richie_ , so of course he was going to do this. 

_Goddamnit._ )

"Okay. _Okay._.. Just-- Grab your bag and come on."

Richie blinked, apparently just as surprised about Eddie helping him as Eddie was. "Come on? Where?"

"To the bathroom?" Eddie scoffed incredulously. "I don't know what you do with shit at your house, but that's usually where _I_ end up putting it."

Richie snorted. "Eds gets off a good one!" he cheered, beaming as Eddie rolled his eyes and following him to the bathroom down the hall.

\------

They worked diligently for almost an hour, clothespins on their noses, rubber gloves up to their elbows (as well as a face mask, apron, and goggles for Eddie because "Do you _want_ to get pink eye, Richie?"), wiping down anything with a hard enough surface to be salvaged, and throwing away anything that they deemed too far gone to rescue, trying (and failing) not to gag as Eddie continued to list of the dangers of messing with human fecal matter. 

Every once in a while, Eddie would catch Richie's shoulders slumping at a wad of discarded paper or notebook, and at one point, a particularly cool foam pen topped with a maple leaf with googly eyes that Eddie recalled being a souvenir from Stan's trip to Vermont the previous summer, and Eddie's heart sank every time his hard work ended up in the garbage bag with a sad, depressing plop. Not that Richie was a particularly well-behaved student, but he _did_ have straight A's, so he must have been put forth a little effort with all his work. 

  
He threw away an old math test, the circled 98% at the top mocking him.

"What about..." Eddie squinted at the cover of what he thought might have been a yellow paper folder at one point. "Your English folder? I think?"

"Pitch it," Richie replied simply, glancing up quickly before going back to wiping down the cover of his Social Studies textbook. 

Eddie nodded, and tossed the folder into the rapidly filling bag. 

He worked quietly, a question weighing heavily on his mind, struggling, for whatever reason, to put it out there. It was weird, he didn't normally have trouble talking to (or _at_ , as the case was more often than not) Richie about anything, but this, for whatever reason, felt different. The thing was, and maybe he was imagining it, but Bowers and Hocksetter and their little posse seemed to be focusing on Richie lately, even more than they had before, which had been _a lot._

Stan mentioned it once before back in November, but they had shrugged it off as those assholes simply needing somewhere to direct their tormenting since Bill had been taken off the menu due to Georgie's disappearance. Richie made a pretty appealing target after all; with his loud, unfiltered mouth and gangly, owlish appearance providing quite a bit of ammunition for the school bullies. 

Maybe foolishly, Eddie hadn't expected it to go on this long. 

"Okay, next up is a purple notebook," he flipped through it absently, most of the pages were filled with notes, definitions, a few doodles here and there. Save for the first few pages, it looked relatively unharmed. Just to be sure, he flipped to the back of the notebook, noticing a few errant doodles toward the last few pages. "Health I think. Looks pretty good, just a few--"

"No!" 

Eddie jumped, the notebook smacking into the floor as Richie slapped it out of his hands. Frantically, he made a grab for it, practically falling on top of it and staring up at Eddie in fear, his eyes even wider than usual behind his glasses. 

"What the fuck, Richie?!" Eddie cried.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he gulped, the tips of his ears going bright red as he scrambled to gather the offending notebook tightly into his chest. Inwardly, Eddie blanched as it made contact with Richie's shirt. "I- I just, I got it, I got this one." He tossed the social studies textbook he had been cleaning over to him. "Here, you clean this."

Eddie raised an eyebrow, gaping a bit at Richie's weird overdramatics. He glared down at the shit-covered book now in his hands, then back at the other boy, who was ripping out the tainted pages of the notebook quickly and then tossing it aside. 

As far away from Eddie as possible in the little bathroom. 

He opened his mouth, either to comment on Richie's behavior, or questions what the fuck the deal was with the notebook, but just like the looming subject of Bower's increased harassment, the words got caught in his throat. Richie looked, frankly, like he had just been pulled back over the side of a ledge he nearly fallen from, his movements frantic and jerky as he chewed on his bottom lip. 

Maybe he would let him have this one. Just this once.

"Sure, fine, _you_ take the nearly clean one, jackass," he grumbled, begrudgingly getting to work on the book. 

Richie's shoulders sagged in relief, the smallest of smiles creeping to his lips. Eddie pointedly ignored how happy he was to see it there. "Well," he began, the smile taking the shape of something a bit more sinister. "It's a _shitty_ job, but someone has to do it."

Eddie groaned. "Oh my god, Rich, _really?_ "

"I dunno about you, but I'm getting _wiped_!" 

"Shut up!" Eddie snorted, a traitorous snort slipping from his nose. "This is _so_ not the time!"

"Yeah Eds, maybe we should take a break, you're looking a little _flushed_."

This time Eddie didn't bother holding back his amused snort, chucking one of his used wipes in Richie's direction. "Ugh, _shut up_ , you _asshole_!"

The words were out before he could stop them. 

Richie beamed. "Eds..."

"No!" he cried, Richie's already gigantic grin growing even wider.

" _Eds!_ "

"No! No pun intended!" he shrieked, finally giving in and allowing himself to laugh. 

Richie was also laughing hysterically now, and Eddie once again stubbornly ignored how the sound warmed his chest. As he continued to clean, he tried to bite back a grin, already knowing he was doing a terrible job. 

\------

The street lights were on by the time Richie made his way home from Eddie's, the surviving collection of school supplies dangling from his hands in a plastic shopping bag. 

"I'll run it through the wash and bring it to you tomorrow," Eddie had explained, dropping the backpack into the machine and finally taking off his mask and gloves. "I'll tell Ma you... I don't know, dumped milk all over it something stupid. She'll believe it."

Richie smirked. "No worries then, I'll just grab it tonight, once your mom and I are all finished with our post-coital cuddling."

Eddie had rolled his eyes. His nose, still sporting little red indents on either side from the clothespins, was doing that cute little scrunched up thing it did when he was annoyed at him, as he promptly kicked him out with a "You owe me big time, dipshit!" and slammed the door shut behind him. 

Richie giggled quietly to himself, the littlest skip accompanying his step as he walked home. Out of the corner of his eye, his purple notebook poked out of the bag mockingly, and Richie sighed, pushing his glasses up on his nose and thanking whatever higher power that was watching out for him that day that Eddie hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary about it. 

Health was his favorite class of the day. If you were to ask him why, he would tell you it was because they often got to look at pictures of gross stuff, and every once in a while, their ancient teacher totally said 'penis' and that shit was hilarious, even in a totally serious, academic setting. But the real reason, the reason Richie would tell _no one_ , not even under threat of certain death, was, well... 

He shared that class with Eddie.

Eddie, who spent more time than not gagging at all the said gross stuff Richie was excited to see. Eddie, who, on more than one occasion, ended up getting detention for arguing with their teacher about the symptoms and causes of certain injuries or viruses they were studying. Eddie, whose seat happened to be just one column over and two rows up from him, in perfect line of sight to make it _look_ like he was diligently reading the blackboard and taking notes, but in _reality._..

Checking once over his shoulder (couldn't be too careful these days), he slipped the notebook out of the bag, flipping to the back to find the last few pages. Sighing only a little wistfully, he let his eyes run over the pages full of his desperate and lovesick doodles. 

It was mainly hearts, or Eddie's name, or Eddie's name _in_ hearts, a stick figure or two, various forms of initials combined with plus signs (R+E, E+R, RT+EK, etc.), and literally one entire page filled with different variations of names in different script, from when Richie had gone through a small crisis when he realized he had no frame of reference as to who would take which name in the scenario where it was _two grooms_ getting married. 

(Richie was partial to Eddie Tozier himself, and he may or may not have doodled little hearts around every version of it, but he knew if it came down to it, he would go with whatever Eddie wanted. Pathetically, he felt his face begin to flush. 

God, he would do whatever Eddie wanted forever if he would let him.)

He wasn't exactly sure when his feelings for him morphed from friend into (oh fuck, it sounded _so lame_ ) _crush_ , exactly, but it had, despite Richie's best efforts to the contrary. When he had decided that Eddie was cute in a way that wasn't so much little fluffy kitten and a little more 'I wish he would kiss me.' When he noticed Eddie's eyes would sparkle right before he got himself mixed up in mischief or got off a good one, usually at Richie's expense. When even the smallest of chuckles at Richie's jokes could send him drifting away on cloud nine for the rest of the week.

But it had. And the literal ache he had for Eddie was tearing his poor little pubescent heart apart.

But he'd done a good job of hiding it, he thought. At least to Bill, Stan, and Eddie.

Maybe not so much Bowers and his goons, he thought wryly, looking at all that remained of his school supplies. But that was a problem for another day.

With one last fond look, he tucked the notebook safely back into his pathetic little plastic bag and sighed, dragging himself up his front porch steps. 

Hopefully he'd never have to worry about that particular prank again; he was pretty sure Eddie wouldn't be so willing to help him should the situation arise. 

He snorted, they'd had enough of dealing with literal shit for one lifetime, thank you. 

**Author's Note:**

> And then like a month later, Bill is all like "Guess where we're going, guys?!" 
> 
> Since I apparently have the humor of a 13 year old boy, I couldn't not explore this little throw-away line from the first movie and try to make something fluffy out of it. Hope it wasn't too gross, I tried not to talk about poop too much, but that's easier said than done.


End file.
